


The A.I.'s Chamber

by time_tier



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Gen, attempted father daughter bonding time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 22:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3267179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_tier/pseuds/time_tier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being an A.I. can get lonely for Angel.  Sometime's Jack pays her visits, but they're few and never long enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The A.I.'s Chamber

            She heard things. Different things, every day. Things about her father. Bad things. It was the only thing she could really do in her spare time… listen to the different channels of the ECHOnet. Her time was filled with it. Her entire being was. She was Handsome Jacks AI and it was quickly becoming clear to her that she no longer wanted to be. It had been this way for years now and she never fully understood why he did this to her in the first place. But now, he relied on her to be this way… He needed to know what people were saying. What people were doing.

            But sometimes she just wanted the voices in her head to stop. Sometimes she would shut it down so she could take a moment to bask in some silence. It would be nice for a while, but then the quiet would grow stale and cold in time. It would be made very clear just how alone she was in her chamber. Her father, or anyone for that matter, hardly ever visited her, nowadays… In these times of silence she found herself wishing her life could be as it used to. With a normal, loving mother and father.  But nobody seemed to know what had happened to her mother… And it seemed like her father had changed. There was a new brewing darkness within him. And people talked poorly of him over the ECHOnet all the time. It was hard for her to ignore. Terrible rumors about her father spread all throughout Pandora and Helios. Were they really true? She could only hope not.

             Perhaps today was a day to get some questions out there… and hopefully some answers as well, because on this day she was lucky enough to be graced by some real company. She looked up, eyes brightening a little as she heard the elevator that led down to her chamber activate. It only took a few more moments for the doors in front of her to open, revealing her father as he hastily stepped into the room. “Angel.” He greeted her as he moved over to a control panel, but did not look up to her.

             Angel watched as he crossed the floor of the room in front of her, frowning slightly when he didn’t giver her any eye contact. “Jack.” She answered back. She rarely referred to him as father to his face anymore. He’d become so impersonal. So demanding. The caring touch of a father seemed to be lacking now.

            After turning a couple nobs and hitting a few buttons, Jack finally looked up to his daughter as she slowly began to float down towards the ground in her beam of light. He walked up to her to meet her as her feet finally touched the ground. Reaching up, Jack brushed Angel’s hair out of her eyes, giving her a somehow charming smile. “There’s my beautiful Siren.” His voice came out in a proud sounding hum.

            Maybe the rumors Angel had heard about him weren’t true. They couldn’t be, right? He suddenly seemed to have that caring, fatherly touch and his words made her feel important. She returned his smile with a small one of her own.

            But this seemingly touching moment was short. It was soon straight to business as Jack’s facial features seemed to harden a bit behind his mask and his tone changed to sound less loving. “So… news from the ECHOnet. Anymore info on that other Siren?”

             Angel looked away. Of course he’d go on asking about that right away… The second her heard of the other Siren, he wanted all the information Angel could find on her. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found anything new on this other Siren and she knew her father would not be happy to hear that. So Angel hesitated in answering for a moment.

             Jack seemed to cue into this hesitation and an un-amused frown quickly fell onto his lips. His tone sounded rather chiding when he spoke now, “Angel… tell me what you’ve heard, baby.”

             Slowly, Angel lifted her eyes back up to meet with Jacks. “I… haven’t heard anything else on the Siren, Maya…” She paused just long enough to see that extremely displeased look cross over her father’s features. She knew she had to give him something or else he’d soon be an angry mess with no hope of giving her normal company or conversation. And that’s the one thing she wanted more than anything right now… So she quickly picked something else up to give him. “However… I did hear of one or two more vault hunters…” She looked to him, hopeful that the new slice of information would be enough to distract him.

             It seemed to work. Jack straightened up a bit and suddenly seemed thoughtful on the subject, looking to Angel as if he expected to hear more. “Where are they now?” A hint of danger lurked in his voice now, his eyes seeming to gleam. He was definitely already making plans to use these new vault hunters. Or to kill them. Angel couldn’t be sure. But at least he had been satisfied now.

            Nodding, Angel answered rather quickly this time, her blue eyes glowing in an extraordinary way as she accessed the information in her systems. “They’ve entered Sanctuary. One is an unlikely subject… A Psycho. But he seems different from others. Less prone to attack without reason… And the other is a Mechromancer. She came here to escape from her planet where she is wanted for accidentally killing a classmate.”

            Jack’s eyes seemed to continue to light up in thought as he listened intently to every word, absorbing every detail. He nodded, “Sanctuary, hmm… Wish you’d found them before they reached that dump.” He frowned for a moment, but then shrugged. “But that’s fine. We can get them. Flush them out like the rest of the vault hunters. Good work, babe.” He gave Angel one last flash of a smile before turning away from her to begin moving back to the control panel, no doubt to raise her back up into her light beam.

            But he just got there! Angel’s feet had only just touched the ground minutes ago. A small spike of panic stabbed through her as she watched her father move away. So she called out to him, “Wait!” She still had questions to ask… things she wanted to talk about. However, despite her cry, Jack was already turning nobs and pushing buttons again. It only took a couple of seconds before Angel’s feet left the ground again.

            It wasn’t until she was set back up in her usual position before Jack even gave any sort of reaction to her saying something. He looked up to her, frowning and seeming irritated. “What?...”

            It didn’t even seem like he really cared what her answer was. Any sort of fatherly aspects that he had shown earlier seemed to be gone now. Angel tried desperately to get it back… to reach out to it. “Daddy…” The word seemed unnatural to say aloud. She hadn’t used it in so long.

            Jack seemed thrown off at the word too, reeling back slightly. It seemed as if he didn’t know what to say at first, but eventually he found words. “What is it, Angel?” His tone had softened again, but it still had an irritated edge to it.

            Angel hesitated, but not for too long. She knew if she waited too long to speak, Jack would become bored of waiting. “I just… I thought we could talk…” She looked to him, hopeful.

            Despite her soft and yearning request, Jack did not seem to be wavered at all. In fact, he suddenly seemed even colder in his response. “We just _did_ talk, Angel. I’m busy and have a lot to do.” With that, he turned his back to her and walked through the elevator doors without a pause. He only turned back to face her once he was inside the elevator to call back to her, “I’ll come back later this week.” And that was it. Jack pressed the elevator button, the doors closed, and he was gone.


End file.
